The Pies play Essendon at the MCG on Friday night and will use that match, along with the remaining home and away fixtures, to further fine-tune their game ahead of the finals.
Collingwood is six points clear on top of the ladder following last week’s win over Geelong and seemingly has top spot sewn up.
But Maxwell said his team had “heaps” to work on and wouldn’t be getting ahead of itself with just three weeks until their tilt at September glory.
“We've still got too much that we have to improve on,” Maxwell said before training on Thursday.
“We're still miles away from where we need to be if we're going to achieve what we want to achieve, so we need these three weeks to make sure we're playing the way we need to play.
“Last week was obviously a good result in that we got a win but there was still so many things that we have to improve on.
“We had 67 inside 50s to 37 (against Geelong), I think it was. You shouldn’t be winning a game [only] by 22 points when there’s that much of a difference, so there’s plenty of areas that we have to work on as a team and the individuals have to work on as well.”
Collingwood is now the outright premiership favourite but Maxwell said that tag wouldn’t faze the side heading into the business end of the year.
The Pies are intent on maintaining their form and will field their best 22 each week, despite the skipper's assertion that a few sore bodies were making their way around the club following the win over the Cats.
“We won’t be resting anyone,” Maxwell said.
“Some guys obviously won’t be available some weeks just because of injuries, [but] that happens in footy.”
A squad of 26 players trained on Thursday morning, with Leon Davis and Tyson Goldsack missing from the group.
Injured defender Ben Reid (quad) took part in running drills before sitting out the main session and appears unlikely to be risked.
Josh Fraser, Paul Medhurst, Jarryd Blair, Nathan Brown, Simon Buckley, Tarkyn Lockyer and Luke Rounds joined the main session on Thursday.
Fraser has been anchored on 199 AFL matches since going out of the side in round 12 and the skipper was reluctant to be drawn on whether the veteran might earn a recall for his milestone against the Bombers.
“[At] five o’clock we’ll find out,” Maxwell said.
“The teams come out at five. Obviously there’s doubt over a couple of our guys who didn’t finish off the game last week, so we’ll monitor them today at training and see how they go.
“A couple of them will train inside and then Mick will make a decision and let everyone know at five o’clock.”
